This site uses cookies to improve your experience and to provide services and advertising.
By continuing to browse, you agree to the use of cookies described in our Cookies Policy.
You may change your settings at any time but this may impact on the functionality of the site.
To learn more see our Cookies Policy.

A boxer friend of the athlete says he was asked to take the blame after a pistol was accidentally discharged in Johannesburg restaurant.

OSCAR PISTORIUS ASKED a friend to take the blame after a pistol was accidentally fired in a Johannesburg restaurant, weeks before the double-amputee runner fatally shot his girlfriend, a witness testified Wednesday at the athlete’s murder trial.

The testimony by boxer Kevin Lerena relates to firearms charges against Pistorius, and raises questions about the character of a man who insists he accidentally shot dead Reeva Steenkamp in his home in the early hours of Feb. 14 last year. Prosecutors allege he intentionally shoot Steenkamp, his 29-year-old girlfriend.

Lerena said the restaurant shooting happened when he and Pistorius and two other friends were in a restaurant in the Melrose Arch area of Johannesburg in January 2013.

One friend, Darren Fresco, passed his gun to Pistorius under the table and told him that there was a bullet in the chamber, Lerena said. Then a shot went off, puncturing the floor near Lerena’s foot had been, he said.

“There was just complete silence,” said Lerena, who described being in shock and having blood where his toe was grazed in the incident. Then, he said, Pistorius apologised, saying: “Are you OK? Is everybody OK?”

Before the restaurant management approached the table, Lerena said, Pistorius asked Fresco to say he was responsible for the gunshot.

“‘Just say it was you. I don’t want any tension around me,’” Lerena remembered Pistorius saying.

“‘There’s too much media hype around me.’”

Lerena said they paid the bill and left the restaurant, and he never spoke about the incident. Two days after Pistoriusshot Steenkamp, he said, he woke up to find over 100 missed calls on his telephone as media from around the world tried to contact him to ask about the restaurant shooting.

Pistorius pictured during a recess on the third day of his trial today [Antoine de Ras/AP/Press Association Images]

Earlier today, chief defense lawyer Barry Roux sought to undermine the prosecution testimony of a couple who say they heard a woman’s screams and gunfire the night that Pistorius killed Steenkamp.

Telephone records will show that the banging sounds the neighbors heard were not gunshots but a distressed Pistorius breaking down the toilet door with a cricket bat after realizing he had shot Steenkamp when she was in the toilet, thinking it was an intruder, Roux asserted.

Throwing doubt on the witnesses’ recollection of the sequence is crucial for Pistorius’ defence after the state maintained there was a loud argument on the night he shot Steenkamp through a door in his bathroom and screams and shouts before a gun was fired.

Pistorius’ team wants to show the screams were the athlete calling for help after the accidental killing.

Charl Johnson and his wife Michelle Burger have testified to hearing a woman screaming, a man shouting for help and then gunshots. During his cross-examination of Johnson, Roux said call records will show Pistorius called an estate manager at around 3:19am and soon after he bashed in the door with the bat.

In Johnson and Burger’s testimony, they say they heard what they described as shots straight after making a call to security at 3:16am. The similar times show the sounds were the bat on the door, Roux argued.

“There is only one thing you could have heard, because it coincides precisely,” Roux said to Johnson.

“That was the time that he (Pistorius)broke down the door (with the bat).”

Johnson replied, addressing the judge: “My lady, I am convinced the sound I heard was gunshots.”

Pistorius, 27, was a globally admired athlete whose career peaked when he ran in the 2012 Olympics. He was born without fibula bones because of a congenital defect and his legs were amputated when he was 11 months old. He has run on carbon-fiber blades and is a multiple Paralympic medalist. He also competed at the London Olympics but didn’t win a medal.

TheJournal.ie is a full participating member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports
the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme in addition to defending the freedom of the
press, offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may
have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the
Press Ombudsman Lo-Call 1890 208 080 or go to
www.pressombudsman.ie
or www.presscouncil.ie

Please note that TheJournal.ie uses cookies to improve your experience and to provide services and advertising. For more information on cookies please refer to our cookies policy.

Journal Media does not control and is not responsible for user created content, posts, comments, submissions or preferences. Users are reminded that they are fully responsible for their own created content and their own posts, comments and submissions and fully and effectively warrant and indemnify Journal Media in relation to such content and their ability to make such content, posts, comments and submissions available. Journal Media does not control and is not responsible for the content of external websites.